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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26580769">Mithraeum Nights</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elldritch/pseuds/Elldritch'>Elldritch</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Content Warning: Ianthe Tridentarius, Corpses, Dismemberment, Eye Trauma, Gen, Gore, Infant Death, Mass Murder, Mental Health Issues, Pregnancy, Public Nudity, Suicidal Ideation, The People's Tomb Fic Jam: Dream, Uncanny Valley, Violence, ambiguous/dubious consent (kissing only; not explicit), unhealthy relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:08:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,143</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26580769</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elldritch/pseuds/Elldritch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Aboard the Mithraeum, six bodies slept, and nine souls dreamed.</p><p>A collection of dream sequences, set during the events of Harrow the Ninth. </p><p> </p><p>Different characters have different levels/kinds of fucked up in their subconscious, so I've put individual chapter warnings in the notes for each chapter. They're posted in vaguely ascending order of disturbingness/gore, and each chapter is totally standalone, so feel free to read selectively!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. John</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Chapter specific CW: public nudity</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>John was late for his exam. He’d been mortified, after ten thousand years, to receive the letter through the post from his old secondary school. Administrative error, checking back over old records. Incomplete courses.</p><p><br/>He was God. Surely being God put one beyond the remit of a small-town headteacher on a bureaucratic power-trip? But hearing his old school secretary’s voice on the phone, he’d been sixteen again, and it hadn’t occurred to him that it was possible to refuse the absolute authority in her voice.</p><p><br/>So here he was, running late to his exam. He couldn’t remember studying for it. Had he studied? It had been one hundred centuries since he’d last made notes on little colour-coded cards, stuck post-its crammed with facts and figures to the back of the bathroom door. Damn. He was going to fail, he just knew it.</p><p><br/>John ran into the exam hall, and he was definitely late. Everyone else was already seated at the individual desks, working their way through the exam papers. The invigilator who sat at the front was already halfway through a pile of marking.</p><p> </p><p>All heads turned to look at him, and John realised that he was naked.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Gideon the Ninth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>No specific CW for this chapter :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gideon barely had room to think, in the tiny corner of Harrow’s mind she now inhabited. She drifted, sometimes seeing through Harrow’s eyes. Sometimes - horrifyingly - sharing her thoughts. Mostly she didn’t even have space for her own thoughts, couldn’t find the capacity to so much as form an opinion on what she did see, although some things still got through.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> ... It’s a pommel, Harrow… </em>
</p><p>
  <em> … get your tongue out of Ianthe’s mouth! Ew! What are you doing?!... </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Even her dreams were small, were cramped, were little more than sensory fragments. </p><p>The satisfying ache of a well-exercised muscle. The beige taste of nutrient paste. The sound of clacking prayer bones, and the sharp ring of a blade being pulled from its scabbard. The steel-and-leather scent of her two-hander. </p><p>The feeling of floating in cold salt water.</p><p>A small, struggling, bony body in her arms.</p><p>Wet skin under her lips.</p><p>A whisper in her ear...<em> One flesh, One end... </em></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Gideon the First</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: ambiguous/dubious consent (kissing only)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Saint of Duty did not often dream. He did not sleep so much as he ceased, consciousness utterly blank, great stretches of lost time in his memory like old paper files nibbled away by rodents.</p><p> </p><p>He lay down to sleep in his familiar spartan bed, and closed his eyes.</p><p>
  <em> -Hiatus- </em>
</p><p>And he came to, rapier and spear in hand, in the training hall of the Mithraeum, skin slick with sweat.</p><p> </p><p>He sat at the shuttle’s controls, and he was so weary, in spite of the artificially stimulated cortisol he’d sent whipping around his bloodstream. That blasted Blood of Eden commander still eluded him, and he couldn’t rest until she was caught. </p><p>
  <em> -Hiatus- </em>
</p><p>There were lips pressed against his, roughly, the kiss combative, not sensual. He opened his eyes and his fingers were tangled in locks of vivid red hair.</p><p> </p><p>He sat at the dining table in the Mithraeum, itchy and uncomfortable in his rarely-worn formal clothes. He was watching Mercymorn kiss Augustine, and it was too much, the sight a reminder of the last person he’d kissed, of his greatest betrayal. He got up to leave.</p><p>
  <em> -Hiatus- </em>
</p><p>“Harrow!” John shouted.</p><p>Gideon was leaning against the bulkhead of an anonymous corridor, legs barely holding his weight. The air smelled of burned flesh and scorched bone, and he <em> hurt. </em>He opened his eyes, and saw the pitiable traitor staring back at him. His littlest sister was streaked with ash and sweat, her paint smudged off, revealing a face that was so young, an expression of desperation he recognised all too well.</p><p>“Why I brought along <em> what? </em> What do you <em> mean? </em>” Harrow was demanding, and he was so tired. So disoriented. So sick of these wrenching blanks in his mind. He turned away from the unanswerable questions in her eyes.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Harrow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: infant corpses, blood</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harrow lived in black and white and grey, but she dreamed in colour. </p><p> </p><p>Harrow walked.</p><p>She walked the halls of Drearburh, and she was looking for something. Always looking for something. She didn’t know what.</p><p>Ahead, turning the corner, a sudden flash of red, and then it was gone. Harrow broke into a run, trying to catch it, but the corner receded further into the distance with each step she took.</p><p>She ran faster, bare feet slapping against the cold floor, and then the floor wasn’t cold. The floor was warm and slick and her feet made obscene wet sucking noises as she ran through blood, and knew that if she stopped for even a moment she would sink and drown.</p><p>The blood was so red. Something in Harrow craved and feared and loved that red even as she knew it would destroy her. </p><p>Again, that flicker of crimson, far in the distance, at the limit of her vision. Harrow knew she had to reach it. Harrow knew she’d die when she did.</p><p>Harrow ran.</p><p> </p><p>Harrow ran, and she had been running forever, and the blood beneath her feet had long since dried to a rust. She felt like she was running over sand, over an incomprehensible ocean of spilled blood, skeletonised to a treacherous, shifting mass beneath her feet. The blood was like quicksand beneath her, threatening to drag her down, envelop her. But it was the wrong colour, the wrong brown. It wasn’t the deep ruddy brown of dried blood, but the wan, washed out ochre of skin which had never seen the sun. </p><p>Her running feet kicked puffs of the powdery stuff into the air, until she breathed it in, until she drowned in the air. It did not smell like blood. It smelled of steel and leather, sweat and tears. And then it did smell of blood; the last drop of blood squeezed from a heart that had stopped too soon.</p><p>Ahead, a glimpse of skin, warm and brown in the dim Drearburh light. Harrow heard laughter. She heard screams. She heard something which might be both, and might be neither. Another flash of skin, this time cool and bloodless and greying in death.</p><p>The voice was dying out, and Harrow felt her own heart faltering, her own breaths coming short. She had to reach the voice before it stopped. </p><p>Harrow staggered.</p><p> </p><p>Harrow staggered, and her feet fell alternately on the cool glint of gold and the grasping stickiness of honey. She stumbled over two hundred lumps of amber, and in each piece there was a child, frozen forever at the moment of death, mouths open wide in silent screams. She tripped over a piece of amber larger than the rest; entombed within was the body from the River - the toddler with the red hair.</p><p>Hands gripped Harrow’s skin, dragging her down, pulling her under. The hands were skeletal, but they were not the familiar, soothing colour of bone. The hands were gold, and they clawed her bloody as she struggled to escape. </p><p>The darkness in front of her was broken by two distant, warm, yellow lights. Harrow crawled on hands and knees, trying to reach the light, but the skeletal hands were gouging chunks from her flesh, pulling her apart, piece by piece. She was so scared that there would be none of her left by the time she reached the safety she knew dwelled within those yellow lights.</p><p>Harrow crawled.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Pyrrha Dve</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: general body horror, uncanny valley stuff</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Pyrrha dreamed. Pyrrha had been dreaming for almost a myriad now, waking only rarely, only briefly, in a body which was not her own.</p><p>She dreamed that she sat before a mirror, but the face she saw was a blank, colourless blur. Arrayed on the dresser before her were… parts. Eyes in a whole spectrum of different colours. Noses, some broad, some narrow, some crooked, straight, hooked, snubbed, every nose one could possibly imagine on a human face. Lips and ears and hair and cheekbones and chins. Brushes sat by a palette of paint, and every hue of skin was there, from the palest cream to almost black.</p><p>Pyrrha was trying to remember what her face had looked like. It had been so long since she’d died. She tried combinations, almost at random, but the face which looked back at her was not hers. Not hers. Not hers.</p><p>She kept swapping features out. Maybe this nose… maybe those lips… the more she tried, the more unsettling the face before her became. For a moment it looked like Valancy… no, Cristabel… How did she recognise their faces, but couldn’t remember her own? </p><p>Now it didn’t even look quite human, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. The face in the mirror stared at her with hatred, malice, an undeniable threat. Pyrrha swapped out features more desperately now, terrified of what would happen if she couldn’t find herself...</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Why yes, I did sort of pinch this concept from that episode of the Mind Robber serial from Doctor Who.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Ianthe</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: dismemberment, gore, unhealthy relationship, arguable suicidal ideation</p>
<p>And obviously, CW: Ianthe ;)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Hey, ‘anthy,” Coronabeth said without turning around, admiring her reflection in the mirror. “Can I borrow those earrings? I lost one of mine.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course,” Ianthe replied, smiling, reaching up to unhook the jewellery from her ears, holding them out to her sister. The garnets looked better on her anyway; they were too bloody against Ianthe’s washed-out skin. Naberius said they made her look like a corpse, every time she wore them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They left their rooms to walk the terraces of Ida, and Corona basked beneath the sunlight, and the admiring gazes of all they passed. Ianthe’s garnet earrings twinkled in Coronabeth’s ears, catching the sun. Ianthe was content to pass in her shadow, unnoticed by any but Corona herself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Corona shivered in a sudden chill breeze.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can I borrow your cardigan?” She asked, and Ianthe immediately took off the garment and handed it to her sister. Coronabeth always felt the cold more than she did, anyway; her circulation was terrible.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Later at dinner, Corona dropped her fork.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you want to use mine?” Ianthe asked, when she saw that the utensil had fallen right under the table, and her sister was unable to reach to retrieve it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, it’s fine,” Coronabeth replied, “I just need to reach a little further…” Without another word, Corona reached out and took Ianthe’s right arm, pulling it free of her shoulder with a wet pop. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before Ianthe could react, her sister had turned away, using the limb to fetch her dropped fork. Everyone around them continued eating, not sparing a glance for the newly-dismembered lesser twin. When Coronabeth had her fork back in hand, she discarded Ianthe’s arm, tossing it casually off into the shadows around their table. Ianthe left the table, searched the corners of the room, but the arm was gone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Later, they lay side by side in bed, the right sleeve of Ianthe’s nightgown empty. Her left arm brushed her sister’s, and Coronabeth’s skin was icy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re cold,” Ianthe said</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m always cold.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know what will help.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ianthe reached into her own chest, the fingers of her left hand clumsily pushing through skin and muscle and bone until she could wrap them around her beating heart. In one smooth movement, she pulled the organ free. The world went dim around her, and the last thing she saw was her sister, daintily sinking her teeth into the left ventricle, Ianthe’s blood running down her chin.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Commander Wake</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: eye trauma, violence, mass murder</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wake fought. She was an avenging angel, on a holy mission to erase necromancy and all its foul works from the universe.</p><p> </p><p>She killed them with guns; they dropped before her bullets, felled like sheaves of wheat.</p><p>She killed them with bombs, the bright burning fragments exploding like fireworks across the empty blackness of space.</p><p>She killed them with knives, and their blood was hot and red on her hands, almost like human blood. But she knew that these monsters were not human. </p><p>She killed them with gas. She watched them choke, and fail, and fall, their bone abominations crumbling to dust around them as they perished.</p><p> </p><p>And when she didn’t have any of those, she just got in real close, and put her thumbs through their fucking eyes. She had one of them pinned beneath her now, and in their fighting their bodies formed a bizarre, mocking reflection of love; their hips gripped between her thighs, her hands on their face like a lover.</p><p> </p><p>Wake pressed the pads of her thumbs into the wet, yielding eyeballs. As they burst beneath her hands, she saw too late that those eyes were a deep brown, with a kind of red spark to them; the brown of fractured rock glass, all mixed in with dark pupil. They were eyes that gave very little away, but Wake had long since learned to read them.</p><p> </p><p><em> Pyrrha </em> … <em> ! </em></p><p> </p><p>But it was done.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Mercymorn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: infant death, implied suicidal ideation, pregnancy, body horror</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cristabel stood over a cot. The window was open wide, letting in enough of the washed-out predawn light to illuminate the room. As Mercy walked in, Cristabel put her finger to her lips. </p><p>“Shh, the baby is asleep. Don’t wake her.”</p><p>Quietly, Mercy joined her. Cristabel’s face was alight with love as she beheld the sleeping infant, their first child. Cristabel put one hand in Mercy’s, holding her tight, the other hand on her stomach, fingers splayed, as though she could still remember feeling their baby kick beneath her skin. Cris had glowed her way through pregnancy - no sickness, no swollen ankles, only the joyful radiant knowledge that life blossomed within her resurrected womb. Mercy had already decided that she would carry their next child. Cassie had tried to persuade them to use one of her artificial incubators, said it was easier, less messy, but that didn’t feel right to Mercy. Life <em> was </em>messy; that was part of its beauty. </p><p>Mercymorn gave a silent prayer of thanks for the thousandth time that Cristabel had agreed to leave with her, when they’d discovered what lyctorhood really meant. It had been easy, in the end, to say no to eternal life at God’s side, in exchange for a mortal lifespan with Cristabel. She was happy here, with her little family, and soon their family would be bigger - the Eighth House was nearly completed, and any day now the halls would be full of resurrected life. </p><p>When Mercymorn could tear her eyes away from Cristabel’s beauty, she looked down into the cot. Their daughter was there, black-haired and brown-skinned, her face streaked black and white by the light of the window. Mercy shuddered, as though a chill breeze had blown in through the open shutters - for a moment, the light playing over the dear baby face had made it look like a skull.</p><p>Their daughter rolled over in her sleep, arms reaching out until they found the red-headed doll laid next to them. The baby was tiny, delicate, she already clearly had a necromancer’s build, so the doll was almost as large as the child. Still fast asleep, their daughter snuggled up to the doll, burying her face in the soft fabric.</p><p>“Isn’t she just the cutest?” Cristabel asked, but Mercy couldn’t answer. Something was wrong.</p><p>“She isn’t breathing!” Mercy moved to take the doll away before their daughter could smother herself, but Cristabel held her back.</p><p>“Cris, let me go, she’s going to die!”</p><p>“We had the choice to stop.” Cristabel said, sadly, and Mercy turned to look at her, incredulous, unable to understand how she could stand there and watch their daughter die. Cristabel’s shirt was soaked, her breasts leaking bloody milk. Her eyes spilled over with tears, and the eyes were wrong, they weren’t Cristabel’s eyes. Mercy was staring into her own eyes, wet with tears, and Mercy couldn’t hold their gaze. She turned her attention back to the crib.</p><p>The baby turned its face to her, expression slack, skin bloodless and cold, lips a cyanotic blue. The eyes opened, irises a gold that turned Mercy’s bowels to water. </p><p>The infant spoke.</p><p>“I chose to stop.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Augustine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: cannibalism, tonnes of gore, murder, general body horror</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Augustine dreamed. He sat at a long table, laden with food, and set for eighteen. It was a familiar memory, of simpler days in Canaan house. Almost every chair was filled, only the seat at John’s right sat empty.</p><p>That was probably for the best. Alecto had never possessed the best table manners.</p><p>John was carving from the roast which was the centrepiece of the table. “Leg or wing?” he asked Cytherea.</p><p>“Wing.”</p><p>John plunged his knife into the meat of the shoulder, expertly separating the limb at the joint, then he lifted the whole arm onto Cytherea’s plate. It barely fit, limp fingers dangling off the edge, the pale tip of the humerus poking out obscenely from the darker flesh. One by one, they passed the plate along, until it sat in front of Augustine’s youngest sister.</p><p>“Ulysses?” John asked.</p><p>“You know I’ve always been a leg man, John.” The table erupted into wry laughter; Ulysses winced as Titania kicked him under the table. Wordlessly, John sliced a generous hunk of meat from the thigh in front of him, and slapped it down onto the plate. </p><p>The flesh oozed bloody liquid over the white plate.</p><p>“John,” Augustine objected, “look, it isn’t cooked.” </p><p>Everyone ignored him, and the plate was passed down with its grisly, seeping burden. Valancy took up a knife and started slicing into the melon in front of her, knife slipping easily through the soft flesh, exposing layers of dermis and fat, glands and ducts. She handed the first slice to Cyrus, and he took a huge bite, then smiled, and his teeth were bloody.</p><p>One by one, John served them all, until the body on the table was reduced to an abbreviated torso and head, hair draped to cover the face. Only Loveday’s plate was empty, but Cytherea coughed and choked and heaved until a quivering heap of lung fell from between her lips. The twiggy mass sagged on Loveday’s plate, the very alveoli seeming to breathe a sigh of relief as they expired, free from the prison of Cyth’s wasted body.</p><p>Loveday smiled, and picked up her knife and fork. Augustine looked away.</p><p>“Gus,” Alfred said, and Augustine turned to face his brother. “Pass me that knife?”</p><p>Augustine turned, and Cristabel handed him a knife. It was too large to eat with - a knife for butchery, not for the dinner table.</p><p>“What do you want this for?” Augustine asked as he turned back to Alfred. The knife was buried between Alfred’s ribs, Augustine’s hand still clasped around the hilt. </p><p>Alfred laughed, blood pouring from between his lips. Augustine tried to pull the blade from his body, but Cristabel’s hand stilled his.</p><p>“Leave it,” she said. “He wanted it this way.”</p><p>Augustine turned to John to beg him to help. John was the Resurrecting Lord, the King Undying, the Kindly Prince. John was God. John could fix this. John would save Alfred.</p><p>As he opened his mouth, the ravaged body on the table turned to face him, opening sickly yellow eyes.</p><p> </p><p>“He lied to you.” Alecto said.</p>
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